The Last of UsThe Last of UsTV adaptations often condense and simplify the source material, but the Season 2 premiere suggests further expansion from the video games
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By Riley McAteeApril 15, 10:30 am UTC • 4 min
Typically, when a story is adapted for the screen, creators look for places to cut. Writers remove side plots, combine characters, or condense scenes in an effort to shorten dense source material. It’s inevitable, really—a book can take dozens of hours to read, a video game a similar amount of time to play. A movie or a TV show has a fraction of that time to tell the same story.
But in Season 1 and now with the first episode of Season 2 of The Last of Us, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have shown that their instinct isn’t to cut but to add. In Season 1, this tendency resulted in some significant new material. The first big addition was to the story of Bill and Frank—the latter of whom appears only as a corpse in the game—which produced one of the season’s more acclaimed episodes. Then the show gave us more depth to Henry and Sam (also a positive inclusion), as well as a new character in Kathleen (not nearly as acclaimed). In the Season 1 finale, the series gave us a flashback to Ellie’s mother, Anna—who is mentioned offhand in the game—which also served to reveal how Ellie got her immunity.
All these additions resulted in some delightful new material for viewers who had played the game—but also some rocky pacing for the nine-episode first season. While Season 1 started off as a methodical, slow burn, it ended up ripping through the main plotline toward the end—given that Episodes 3 and 7 are flashbacks and that Joel and Ellie are incapacitated for Episodes 8 and 9, respectively, the core Joel-Ellie relationship wasn’t given as much space to develop as it was in the game. Still, I’d call the instinct to add a good one overall.
More on ‘The Last of Us’
More on ‘The Last of Us’
Two years later, Season 2 of The Last of Us has arrived—and it, too, wastes no time in adding to the story. It begins with the very first scene, where we meet Abby and her Firefly companions outside of the hospital in Salt Lake City where Joel saved Ellie by massacring a group of Fireflies. Abby lost someone important to her and vows to exact revenge on Joel.
This is a big change from the game, where Abby’s intentions, motivations, and backstory are kept completely hidden from the player until much later in the story. Druckmann explained to The Washington Post that, because The Last of Us Part II is being split into multiple seasons of TV, it “didn’t feel correct” to leave Abby’s motivations untouched for the entire second season. “The other reason,” he continued, “in the game, you play as Abby; you’re connected. We can withhold certain things here.”
As impactful as this change could be, I’m skeptical of how much more of Abby we’ll see before Season 3. The credits for the first episode list Kaitlyn Dever as only a guest star, so she may not hang around for long.
The Abby change is, technically, just a reordering of the story. But this episode also introduced a couple of characters that don’t exist in the game at all. The first is Benjamin—Tommy and Maria’s 5-year-old son. In the game, Tommy and Maria are childless, but last season, Tommy revealed that he was expecting a baby—and Joel couldn’t even be happy for him. When Tommy says, “I feel like I’d be a good dad,” Joel merely responds, “Guess we’ll find out.” At the time, Joel was too wrapped up in his own feelings of loss and regret as a father to be happy for his brother.
Fast-forward five years, and Joel is taking to the uncle role rather well. He’s bouncing Benjamin on his knee, explaining how maps work. It’s a cute scene—and one that illuminates how Joel is healing emotionally.
It’s not the only paternal addition the showrunners created for Joel in this episode. We also get an extended scene of him teaching Dina how circuit breakers work—reminiscent of Joel’s late Season 1 relationship with Ellie. In the game, Dina and Joel never interact. But this scene highlights some of Joel’s strengths as a father figure—and also his weaknesses as someone who craves validation from younger people looking up to him. It helps contrast why he’s so frustrated with Ellie because the rift between them means he’s no longer getting that validation. It also shows off some of Dina’s natural charm and humor (and Isabela Merced is crushing the role so far).
But the biggest addition so far is the show bringing in Catherine O’Hara as Joel’s therapist. Joel doesn’t go to therapy in the game—talking to a therapist wouldn’t exactly make for engaging gameplay. But television can allow a scene like this to sing and create opportunities to push the story further. First, it highlights some of the difficult choices in this world—Joel had to shoot this woman’s (presumably infected) husband, and now she has to reckon with giving therapy to her husband’s killer. But most importantly, it illustrates Joel’s own guilt and reckoning with the way he saved Ellie in Season 1. He’s still lying to himself about exactly what choice he made. He saved Ellie, yes, but he also lied to her about how everything went down. He didn’t give her a say in the matter, and he killed a dozen-odd people in the process.
The final addition in this episode? The last scene, which reveals that the Cordyceps infection has made its way into Jackson via a waste pipe. This doesn’t happen in the game—and I’m not entirely sure where the show is going with it. But it does set up what should be a pretty explosive Episode 2.
Riley McAtee is a senior editor at The Ringer who focuses on America’s two biggest sports: the NFL and ‘Survivor.’
